Tag: immigration

The recent surge of illegal immigrant children across our southern border is a humanitarian tragedy that is only now being understood. Almost 50,000 children, without adult supervision, have been captured since October, and most project that number will rise to 90,000 by September.

Note that this is not some small variation; that is a 100% increase over the same period last year.

This surge did not occur in a vacuum. President Obama has before and after his re-election promised the loosening of immigration rules on deportation, and has widely announced that he wanted to sign executive orders furthering those ideals. He first signed the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals memorandum in June 2012, which directs US Immigration officials to practice ‘prosecutorial discretion when it comes to illegal undocumented youth immigrants.

These moves, unsurprisingly, have not gone unnoticed south of the border. In fact, in many countries in Central and South America, there are editorials and TV broadcasts that have touted this change. This has often been misinterpreted as a true amnesty, and thus many uneducated families have made the decision that if the door has swung wide open for their children, they can’t miss the opportunity to jump through that door.

And that has resulted in a change of behavior across the board. Unaccompanied minors now are surging the border, in hopes to benefit from Obama’s DACA, even if this is an incorrect understanding of the rules the President signed into force. But even more so, those children are purposefully being apprehended by immigration officials. This from USA Today:

One key difference the recent arrivals are displaying from their predecessors: They’re not bothering to sneak deeper into Texas, opting instead to turn themselves in and allow U.S. policy toward immigrant youth decide their fate, said Chris Cabrera, a McAllen-based Border Patrol agent and vice president of the local chapter of the National Border Patrol Council. “We’re seeing record numbers of children coming across,” he said. “We’re dealing with so many of them turning themselves in that it makes it hard for our agents to focus on anything else.”

Legally of course this is not what President Obama intended. But the logical result of his policies is not surprising whatsoever. Uneducated, non-English speaking people across the world heard what they wanted to hear; a President basically removing the major blockade for their children to enter the United States. Did Mr. Obama really expect a different result?

This of course puts the President and his Democrat allies into a bind. Hillary Clinton, who is on her ‘Throw Obama Under the Bus” Book tour, didn’t miss the opportunity to…throw Obama under the bus.

“They should be sent back as soon as it can be determined who responsible adults in their families are, because there are concerns whether all of them should be sent back,” Clinton said. “But I think all of them who can be should be reunited with their families.”

This is a major quandary for the Obama Administration, who has made the ‘virtual’ DREAM act one of their second term priorities. Furthermore, there are practical realities: once we allow the children across the border, our laws give them specific protections. Here from Frank Sharry of America’s Voice, via Greg Sargent:

“It’s easy to say they should all be sent home. But that’s really hard to do. The law requires them to get their day in court, and many will qualify for some form of relief. You have to make sure these kids have an opportunity to present their situation in court, because they are more like refugees than immigrants. Making sure they show up would require holding all these kids in huge detention centers — rather than releasing them to family — and a massive infusion in judges to relieve the backlog of the courts, neither of which is possible under current budgetary and political restraints.”

We all agree with this. There is a balance between the law and being humane. The problem here is…Obama shifted the balanc, and therein lies the basic problem with the entire episode.

Democrats have long believed that loosening immigration rules, followed by enforcement of hiring and border protections, would stem the tide of illegal immigration. However, they get the chronological order completely backwards.

This story shows the fundamental flaw in their logic, and why their plan will never work. Once you loosen the rules on illegal immigrants, foreigners who are desperately poor and have no other choices will make the choice that has now open to them. In this case, President Obama’s order, unintentionally but still forcefully, shifted the dynamic in such a way to make it worthwhile for hundreds of thousands of parents to send their children unaccompanied across the US border, in hopes that Mr. Obama’s administration would largely keep their promise of not deporting the majority of them, and thus, giving them a backdoor legal status into the United States.

Furthermore, because of the laws already existing, we must give those children due process. In other words, because of the already existing backlog of cases, many of these minors could spend months, if not years potentially, in holding camps. Is that humane?

Liberals will argue that was never Obama’s intent. Maybe so, but the results are the same. This goes to the heart of the matter on comprehensive immigration reform. I support immigration reform, and even support the DREAM act in theory, but the entire system will fail until you secure the border. No legalization process or amnesty will long survive the reality that our border is quite open. If you don’t secure the border…the surge of immigrants is the result.

This entire episode in liberal experimentation with social engineering proves that.

This week’s podcast began with a cast change. We are pleased to introduce our newest co-host, Antonio Cunningham, but shocked at the departure of our friend James Pisano. Jim took the first part of the show to explain his departure and wish us well. Then we focused on Immigration enforcement policy. Nikos walked us through the LEGAL process that he followed. It really clarifies why legal immigrants can have so little patence or respect for the “plight” of illegals. We touched on what Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid thought about illegal immigration in 2003 versus 2014, and how illegal immigration can very easily be the straw that breaks the back of the Nation.

About the show:

Every Thursday, 9pm Central, join us for an hour of Conservative Discussion with real people from real places in America, NOT DC and NOT the Media. CU Talks is the one hour weekly program fromThe Conservative Union, largest conservative community on Google Plus. We focus on political news of the week, as it matters to you, and with an optimistic spin.

About the hosts:

James Pisano(The Chief) lives in California, is currently active duty in the Coast Guard, and drives a Prius – not because he’s afraid of global warming, but because it made sense for him to purchase it – FREE MARKET, YEAH!

Nikolaos Dimopoulos(Nikos) was born in Greece, got here as soon as he could, will be a US Citizen eligible to vote in 2016, and is the American Dream personified.

Passing any version of the Gang of Eight’s bill would be worse than passing nothing.

Rich Lowry and Bill Kristol wrote a joint editorial today, for their respective magazines, Nationl Review Online and The Weekly Standard, in which they call on the House of Representative to kill the Comprehensive Immigration Reform bill. I completely agree, and want to echo the call. Perhaps if thousands of us do so, our legislators will hear us.

As they say:

We are conservatives who have differed in the past on immigration reform, with Kristol favorably disposed toward it and Lowry skeptical. But the Gang of Eight has brought us into full agreement: Their bill, passed out of the Senate, is a comprehensive mistake. House Republicans should kill it without reservation.

The bill as formulated is amnesty and cronysim, nothing more. The good intentions and credib

ility of the bill’s authors earn it consideration, but what matters are the results. The result is a bad bill, that will do permanent damage to this country.

The bill won’t end the illegal alien problem. Enforcement will be ignored just as it is now, and just as Obamacare is being ignored. This Administration disregards laws it doesn’t like, and they don’t like border enforcement.

The changes to LEGAL immigration will flood the country with low skilled workers, to compete with current native and immigrant low skilled workers. It harms middle and low-income Americans the most

It greatly expands the entitlement nation. We simply can’t afford that

There is no reason to rush this through, there is no benefit to letting this amnesty happen now.

This bill is “the opposite of conservative reform, which simplifies and limits government, strengthens the rule of law, and empowers citizens.”

I’m really sorry to just hit you with this, when you’ve been working so hard with the Gang of 8 on the immigration deal. For a while we’ve been happy together – you’ve been on my list of potential future Presidential candidates. But I’m sorry to say, our time together is over, you are off the list.

It’s not me, it’s you.

It’s not your ethnicity, your appearance, or even your home state. I think you’re kinda pretty, and not EVERYONE from Florida is bat crap crazy. Really, it’s nothing superficial at all. Its what you do and what you say. You’ll be fine as 1 of 100 Senators for as long as the people of Florida are interested in having you there, but as for anything else? No thanks.

You joined the Gang of 8 with the best of intentions, I have no doubt. It was a huge task, a huge gamble, and I really wish it had paid off. There was really never any chance that the legislation would be any good, and it’s pretty damn horrible now that we’re getting to see it. But this was a chance for us to see if you are a leader or a follower. It’s become clear that you’re a follower. The fact that you are the “face” doesn’t make you the leader, it makes you the lead singer of the band

It would have been GREAT if you’d been a strong enough pro-enforcement influence that you’d been able to persuade the other 3 R’s and a few of the D’s to come up with some actual decent stuff.

It would have been GREAT if you’d have been a good enough and strong enough negotiator to really shape good legislation.

It would have been GREAT if you were enough of a leader that your wishes had become the plan that the other 3 R’s followed

It appears that you became the follower of the 7 other members of the group. You may have tried, really hard, and that’s nice, but what matters is results, and the results are just exactly as bad as I would have expected had you not been part of the gang, so the measurable effect of your influence on the final legislation is pretty much nil.

That’s a disappointment. Leaders need to be able to guide negotiations, they need to be able to move the needle. As one of 8, you don’t seem to have done that very well.

Then we come to what you’ve been doing over the last few days. Denying that it’s amnesty. Using the language of the left by calling illegal aliens “undocumented”. That’s an inaccurate euphemism, and I can’t respect you for it. You’ve started lying to me. So you didn’t just fail to lead in the negotiations, you’re now trying to convince me of something other than the truth. Your loyalty seems to be to the process and to the Gang more so than to the truth and the nation. Or you genuinely believe what you are saying, and that’s of concern as well.

So, while I will always think of you as one of the better Senators, and will rely on your reliably conservative vote on legislation, I can’t consider you a potential national leader. Good Presidents don’t usually come from the Senate anyway, that’s a really different skill set. I look forward to you having a long and successful career, but not as a Presidential contender.